A dustland fairytale
by lonni
Summary: Out where the dreams all hide, out where the wind don't blow. A Tim Riggins backstory, set shortly before season 1.


A dustland fairytale

by Lonni

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**A/N:** Does anyone still read FNL fanfiction? I hope so. I was thinking of writing a S1 AU, this might be a sort of prequel. Let me know what you think!

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_Out where the dreams all hide,  
__out where the wind don't blow,  
__out where the good girls die.  
__And the sky moves slow._

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Tim knew that some people managed to live in their past. They would talk about closing their eyes and being somewhere else, some place better, away from that dusty town with no future.  
Tim wasn't that kind of person, and he knew he would never be.  
He lived in the present, didn't overly care about the future, and tried to not waste any time remembering of the past. Tim hated regrets, hated thinking back to what he could have done and fucked up, yet he kept doing it anyway, one stupid mistake after another. Screwing things up was his way to control his life – he couldn't make it any better, but he could make it worse. Better thank being passive. _Hell or nothing?  
_

__That didn't really work well with memories, though. You couldn't control your past and, as much as Tim liked to talk about 'making memories', he knew he'd end up forgetting how it all felt while he was living it, he knew he would end up somehow blaming himself for something.  
The present was all he had. And that scared him to death.

Tim's first memories of his family weren't that bad. Or, at least, he couldn't tell the difference. Money and reputation don't really matter when you're five years old and the sun shining through your dusty bedroom window is the most wonderful thing in the world.  
He remembers the first time he held a gold club, he remembers that time when Billy's first girlfriend called him cute, he remembers thinking his momma was the most beautiful momma he'd ever seen, and she really was.  
Tim knew he'd probably been happy back then but, for all he tried, he never managed to bring that feeling back to mind. All he ended up doing was to remember things he'd been too young to understand – his mother crying, and what his father exactly did with the gold club that one time, and how Billy used to spend more time at his girlfriend's than he did at home.

Growing up, Tim started to realize that most people didn't like having him around. Almost everyone in town seemed to always glare at him, looking like they expected him to become a bigger fuck up than his father was, even if he didn't really know what fuck up meant. He learned it the hard way the first time he said it to Walt, during dinner on a Wednesday night. Tim remembered Billy's pale face and he knew he must have felt pain, but he wasn't sure.  
People also didn't like his brother, who had started high school and made the team. He did okay – not exceptional, but not even bad – but he made the mistake of dating the mayor's niece. She was two years older than him, and on a rebellious streak; when she got caught drinking and driving her parents blamed Billy and sent her to a prep school in Austin, or she would end up like Tim's own mother, or so they said.

Tim's mother's name was Katherine. He really couldn't think of a more pretentious, high-end class name than hers; and yet there she was, smoking Pall Malls and drinking cheap tequila in their backyard. She was beautiful too, with big blue eyes and strawberry blonde hairs, the kind of sophisticated beauty you wouldn't expect to see in a white trash neighborhood in Dillon, Texas. She'd had the bad luck to be at a graduation party in Houston one time when Walt went to the city looking for work, and her glamorous parents cut every contact after she got pregnant.  
Katherine wasn't a good person, just weak. She somehow managed to turn what was supposed to be a stupid teenage rebellion into her life, and she simply didn't know how to deal with the real world outside of her fancy neighborhood. She was a kind, God fearing woman, though, and she tried to stick around as long as she could, for her children's sake.  
She resisted a little over fifteen years before finally giving up and going back to her parents. She moved back to her childhood home, got a GED and an appropiate Art History degree, met an older man in her familiy's circle and made a new life for herself, somehow managing to forget the family she'd left behind.  
Billy never told Tim the whole story.

When his mother left, Tim didn't cry. He couldn't see the point – she wasn't dead, she'd just gone away. He remembered his brother hugging him and saying something about him needing some time to get used to the whole thing, but that wasn't it. At nine years old, Tim knew he should have missed his mother, but it all seemed so stupid. He'd been hearing screams and arguments for months, she wasn't coming back. Tim's situation had changed, he changed with it. Tim figured out that everybody leaves, sooner or later, and so he stopped talking and started spending more time on his own. He knew he wasn't going anywhere.

For all his bad reputation, Billy was a smart enough young man. He wasn't as messed up as his younger brother would end up being, and he had enough good sense to know he had half a chance to achieve something if he actually _tried_, so he left the football team his senior year – the year after the Panthers had won State – to focus on his grades and his dream of a golf scholarship.  
Billy ended up stuck in Dillon, like his father before him, and tried to convince himself that he wouldn't have gone to college anyway, because college just wasn't for people like them.  
He still kept wishing he'd a chance to try, though.

It had happened about a year after Katherine left – Billy got a letter with a River Oaks address on it, where she said she wished his well and promised to come and visit some day. Even Tim realized what it meant. To Walt she sent divorce papers, a request to not contact her again and a check. He signed the papers, took the check and left town. That was how Billy knew where to find her mother, from the letter she wrote saying she'd gotten the papers. He kept the whole story to himself, and had to listen for years to his little brother saying that, in the end, their parents weren't that bad.

Tim didn't have any kind of parental control by the time he started middle school. There was Billy, of course, but Billy wasn't mature enough to be a father figure. He tried his hardest, though, and they were both quite satisfied with the results. No curfew on one side, no overwhelming responsibilities on the other. Tim had started hanging out with Jason Street a couple of years before, and they spent hours playing football wherever they could, because Jason hoped to make varsity on his freshman year. When he wasn't with Jason, Tim spent most of his time on his own, walking around and generally not doing much. Tim realized his teacher probably thought he was stupid, but the truth was that he couldn't stand the whole fucking town. He was capable enough to manage decent grades, and they left them alone.

The nights Billy had something better to do than come home, Tim spent the night watching football on ESPN, crying ladies on Oprah and boring movies with things blowing up. He found a Fight Club VHS one night and, after the fifth or sixth time, Tim decided he liked it enough to actually get the book. It was the first time he could remember reading something because he wanted to, and probably the last one. Still, he really liked it. _What is better, hell or nothing?  
_Tim thought he might know the answer to this one.

The year Jason started high school was the year Tim started drinking. There was always alcohol in his house, and Billy was of the idea that getting used to drinks was better than completely lose it the first time he tried, so he started going with Jason (who hadn't made varsity on his first year, but was the star of the JV team and still one of the cool kids) to the parties the Pathers threw on Friday night. He'd hit a growth spur sometime during the summer, and nobody really minded if he drank. Most people already expected from him anyway.  
Tim never drank tequila though. He didn't smoke either, especially not Pall Malls.

He'd started dating that year. Well, Jason was actually the one who started dating, going out with a girl in his World History class before meeting Lyla halfway through the year. Tim's 'girlfriends' were all high school girls he went out with for a couple of before they remembered that age difference thing and what his last name was. Tim didn't really mind.  
Later on that year Tim finally understood what being hungover felt like. It was a painful, horrible thing, but the feeling of invincibility he felt the night before was worth every bit.  
When he started showing up half drunk at school, nobody said anything. The teacher knew of his living situation, and nobody really wanted to get Billy in trouble. He was a nice enough young man, they thought, as long as he stayed away from their daughters, and he _had_ won a State Championship.  
Plus, nobody really thought Billy would care.

The year after that Jason _did _make varsity, and introduced Tim to some of the rally girls.  
Tim learned that sex was good, the morning after awkward, and that being on the team was a very good thing. He completely stopped caring about school – his first two years had gone well enough, and who fails eight grade anyway? – to focus on runs and tackles and sprints.  
Billy started bringing him around when he went out to bars or to the Landing Strip, and Tim didn't stop drinking. People start glaring at him the way the glared at Billy, but Tim knew there wasn't much he could do about it.  
He started high school that fall with the security that comes from being best friend to the quaterback and knowing half the people in school. Even those he didn't know knew who he was.  
Tim did make varsity, even after a very public, very dirty fight with Smash Williams the fourth day of school. Coach let him in halfway through the second game of the season and, at the end of the game, he told Tim he was going to be the starting fullback from now on.  
That was the first night he had a party at his house since Billy was in high school, and Tim learned that his brother didn't have any rules on sex in the house as long as nobody called the cops.

Tim woke up on Saturday morning sprawled on the floor with the worse hangover of his life, just in time to see a girl coming out of his brother's room complaining loudly about the guy she was with the night before, who left without giving her a ride.  
She ended up calling her sister – who, turned out, had been two years behind Billy in school – to come pick her up, and meanwhile she helped him clean up. As she was leaving she turned to look at him.  
"Would you like to come over at my place tonight?" She really was hot, Tim noticed. "Mindy's. Your brother knows where I live."  
Tim shrugged. "Sure."  
Tim went back to school on Monday morning to find even more people staring at him than usual. Mostly almost awed. And mostly girls. Whatever had happened to that party - he didn't remember - whatever it was made people talk about him.  
For the first time in his life, Tim didn't mind the stares. It had to been better than being a nobody. _What is worse, hell or nothing?_

He kept going out with Tyra – for the first time actually going out. Nothing like Jason and Lyla joined-at-the-hip romantic relationship, but more of a relaxed one. There was no epic love or anything, just calm and quiet and good sex. Nobody would whisper about him corrupting Tyra Collette, people would all think they'd both gotten what they deserved. Tim didn't need to pretend anything around her, and it was easier to walk down the street when he wasn't the only one being stared at.  
No one expected someone like Tim to actually have a committed relationship, and he didn't even try. Everyone expected Tyra to be a tease and go out with other people to make him jealous, and she did. She always came back, though, because Tim didn't trash talk her in the locker room like most of the players did to their girlfriends, and he was fun to be around. He always ended up going back to her too, because their flawed farce of a relationship was better than any other thing he could have.  
Misery loves company, or so they say.

Tim ended his first year of high school with the straight C+ report card he needed to keep his place on the team, even though he hadn't come near a book since middle school.  
The Panthers made it to the play-off and got a good enough placement, with hopes to make it to State the following year.  
Billy got him a truck at the beginning of summer. He wasn't technically old enough to drive yet, but the football season was drawing closer and no one cared.  
Tim spent the whole summer drinking beer, fighting with Tyra and making up again, playing football when he was sober enough and even some times when he wasn't.  
That was when Tim started actually planning his future – he didn't have any real control over his life, except for fucking things up, but he could always try and change what hadn't happened yet.

And Tim knew what he wanted.  
He and Jason, Texas forever.

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And then, on a warm September night, everything changed.  
And his world fell to piece yet once again.


End file.
